Is the customer always right?
So, Gordon Brown is talking up an information revolution and, council services, GPs, police and others are soon to find themselves staring down the barrel of online customer reviews of their services.
In an effort to bridge the gap between perceived transparency shown by sites like eBay and Amazon, Brown’s document – Working Together – acknowledges just how far behind the Government has fallen and pledges to make great strides in making change.
It’s an intriguing thought and one which certainly makes for good soundbites in the media, while no doubt (and quite reasonably) striking dread into the heart of many public sector organisations. Will this prove to be a valuable tool for improving the quality of services and building customer relationships, or simply a more visible channel for complaint? Is there a difference at the end of the day?
What is certain is that the Government will need to be clear about what the purpose of the ratings system is and how this is communicated if it is to prove a genuinely useful and positive tool.
Customer ratings on web sites have been around for well over a decade and have become part and parcel of the online vernacular. They can be incredibly useful, empowering consumers and providing valuable insight into products and services that we might consider buying.
However, it is too simplistic to transfer as a package the same principles to reviews of public sector services and will require some very careful adaptation.
When we go to Amazon or any similar site we have a choice. We don’t have to buy a book or a DVD. Even if we do want to buy it we don’t have to buy it from Amazon. We instinctively understand and appreciate this – it’s pretty obvious, but it’s also very important. It’s our decision to purchase and we do so with a vast array of choice.
In many cases when people talk about public sector services the attitude is very different – we pay our taxes and believe we have a ‘right’ to the kind of service we expect and want.
However , when it comes to publicly funded-services, more often than not we don’t actually have a choice. If we don’t like the way policing is carried out, we can’t exactly choose to shop elsewhere.
The whole point of reviews on sites like Amazon is not so much about transparency, as choice. Introducing a review system for services where there is limited or no choice needs to be very clear about what the purpose of the reviews is. Who’s going to read them? What’s actually going to change as a result?
Companies have had to learn a very basic lesson all over again – you can’t please everyone all the time. And nor, as a commercial brand, should you necessarily try to. Web review sites just make this fact a bit more visible by giving both the positive and negative views their global page-time.
You either have to accept it or you work hard to listen to the feedback and make genuine improvements.
This will be a real communications challenge for many publicly funded services.
Disgruntled customers means disgruntled voters, while trying to keep an entire community happy is almost impossible.
Unless the real purpose and role of these sites is carefully thought through and expectations managed through sound communication, it is hard to see where the win lies in all of this.